Analysis Both sides play with fire as old rules are torn up

While the details remain vague, and Iranian denials strong, it seems very likely, given past history and strong comments from US officials, that a limited Israeli drone strike was launched against the Iranian city of Isfahan yesterday morning.

- Peter Beaumont 

Isfahan is significant for its military-industrial facilities, the presence of an important facility in Iran's nuclear programme and a major airbase hosting the Islamic Republic's ageing fleet of F-14 Tomcats, making the importance of any strike, whether carried out from beyond Iran's borders or from within but backed by Israel, more than symbolic.

While Israel has long been engaged in a "shadow war" with Iran - including a claimed Israeli drone strike on a weapons production facility in Isfahan just over a year ago - the dynamics of conflict are defined as much by the context in which events happen as the discrete fact of the attacks themselves.

What is new and dangerous, regardless of the scale or the suspicion of a degree of posturing on both sides, is that a new normal is establishing itself in the conflict between Iran and Israel.

Iran's attack on Israel last weekend, in response to Israel's strike on one of Tehran's diplomatic facilities in Syria, happened in the open, the first strike on Israel soil by a foreign state in more than three decades.

Israel's response - if it is limited only to this, and despite the radio silence from official sources - no longer exists inside a grey area of somewhat implausible deniability.